America - The Official Thread

  • Thread starter ///M-Spec
  • 39,479 comments
  • 1,777,240 views
Let's take a look at Trump's latest pardon, Ross Ulbricht, who set-up and ran The Silk Road, who made millions from the sale of drugs, weapons, forged documents, and even killings for hire, yep in Trump's words...

"The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me," Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening. "He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!"


The US is screwed!
The World might be screwed.
 
To Trump, the police officers only matter when they are attacking people he doesn't like (Antifa, minorities). If they are going after people he does like (known supremacists, criminals, for example), then he doesn't care about them.
 
IMG_4909.jpeg


Hello ladies :lol:
 
It is just the wording that is Trump level wrong.
They only needed to phrase it to use the chromosomes that are present directly after conception if that is their intention.
This is the "large gametes" definition that has been floated around forever by morons like Shapiro, but is botched with an attempt to work "conception" into the mix. They tried to work in conception, at least in part, because your production of reproductive cells changes throughout your life.

I think they don't like definitions like "male is everyone with a y chromosome and female is everyone else" because it leads to edge cases they aren't fans of.
 
Last edited:
because it leads to edge cases they aren't fans of.
I guess they simply are not fans of facts and need to invent stuff to make it wrong in as many applications as possible.

Looking at
"The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers" and
"(d) Agencies shall effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity."
makes me quite worried in many ways.
 
The emphasis on conception is no doubt to tie-in with the anti abortion order that is almost certainly coming down the line.
I mean, Trump lying about "states issues" and then overreaching here is only to be expected.
 
Instead of going after the money and hoping it makes corporations care, why not punish carelessness? If you're selling a product there is a pretty strong implication that the product isn't going to kill the user. If a product ends up being unsafe through negligent design the penalties for that should be huge. Businesses and the people running them shouldn't be able to get away with it and operating as normal in the aftermath. Take the profits, force the company to be under government oversight, and go after the people who didn't value the lives of those ultimately impacted.

Also create a program that corporations can register for that allows for increased public access to their inner workings and allows them to agree to a set of higher standards for doing business. These companies could be favored for government contracts which could make it very effective in certain industries.
Gonna make another follow up to this. Architects in the united states must be registered with the AIA to practice. To maintain registration with the AIA, architects must consent to a fairly vast ethical code that is written in such a way to explicitly prioritize the wellbeing of society before the client or the architect's business. Failing to adhere to the code of ethics can result in licensure revocation - meaning you can't be an architect anymore. Buildings are definitely public safety issues, but an architect has nowhere near the societal reach as large business owners do. As far as I'm aware, there is no binding ethical code for business broadly, beyond an individual business, meaning that CEOs and other business owners have no obligation to anyone as long as they stay in the confines of the letter of the law...or not, if they are able to get away with it. I wonder if it wouldn't be a bad start to have some kind of professional registration that requires executives at companies over a certain size be registered and commit to some kind of ethical standard.

Why doesn't the profession of business have a code of ethics? Well, in the grand scheme of things, the profession of business is actually quite new I would argue. The concept of business is not, but the abstract, professionalization of business has not been around very long. The AIA has been around since 1857 - and of course the profession of Architecture has been around for millennia. The pursuit of engineering as a profession has been around since 1817. Business as a career path is relatively new, with the first MBA program established in 1908 and the first program outside the USA not until 1950. I don't have a fully formed argument here, but its interesting to think that nobody went to school to "work in business" for almost all of human history - instead they very likely started businesses with ideas/knowledge learned in other fields. But now we have a whole class of meta-business people who are out there with no other objective than acquiring wealth. I'm not saying acquiring wealth is bad, but I think the scorched earth ways that people take to get there are worth consideration. Looking at the newspaper & railroad tycoons of the 19th century tells me this isn't exactly a new problem with capitalism, but it does feel more widespread now. If we want to answer the question of "Why does big business feel like it is utterly devoid of ethics?" then I think we need to look at who constitutes big business, which is almost for sure legions of MBA holders.
 
You're talking rubbish. The specific purpose of nationalism is to divide people of one country from those in other countries. I know you don't think of people in other countries as people, but I promise you that they are.

It may or may not unite the people of said country with each other, depending on how stupid an idea they think it is.

And no, it is not mandatory that everyone or even anyone be nationalists to stand up to any foreign nation. There are many reasons one might choose to stand up to another country (or to not do so), and blind devotion to the bit of dirt that you happened to be born on is probably one of the worst ones.
Where did I say that I don't think of people in other countries as people? That's quite an extreme suggestion. But honestly, how would YOU unite the people of America against the rise of tyranny?
Now putting aside the fact that you're happy to divide people by place of birth, Nationalism can have positive elements, it also contains (and in this context does) many divisive negatives.

Let's get a quick word from George Orwell on the subject...

"Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin. Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first."

Nationalism puts the nation-state above all other states, its very purpose is to divide, and it will most certainly put the Nation-state above its own people if they disagree with the concept of the superiority of the nation-state.
Sounds like patriotism is the thing that's needed more than anything.
 
Sounds like patriotism is the thing that's needed more than anything.
As you get older, just saying hi to the person next to you is needed more than anything. However, I love my neighbour(when they're not killing, screaming or when they steal my wife's trike that was locked in our secure garage that someone's thieving old ass son left open for a crackhead friend of his to steal and four other neighbours' expensive bikes and the security cameras aimed at exits and the garage door weren't positioned optimally to capture the crackhead's face for the the police! ... anyway...) and in a world of diverse humans on the planet that can't even say excuse me as they enter an elevator while you're getting out and people that don't say thank you when you let them in a lane during traffic, heaps of kindness need to come first.

It starts at home. Hug a loved one while you can.
 
Where did I say that I don't think of people in other countries as people? That's quite an extreme suggestion.
Not really.

1737621552719.png


If you think of everyone in the world as people, then nationalism very obviously unites some and divides others. Someone who believed that people in, say, China were people would not say what you said. It wouldn't even occur to them.

But if nationalism only unites people, then all those other "things" that it divides them against must not be people. That makes perfect sense, but only if you don't think of the Chinese as people.

You don't have to say it out loud to make it very clear that you don't think of the Chinese as people. You're going to backpedal on it now, but your inner beliefs came through loud and clear with what you said.
But honestly, how would YOU unite the people of America against the rise of tyranny?
Well, the call is coming from inside the house at this point so that's a bit of a big ask. The people of America demonstrably want tyranny - they elected a tyrant who publically campaigned on his promises to act tyrannically. I'm not sure it's in anyone's power to unite people against their own wishes.

But let's generalise and say that you have a lot of individuals who are against tyranny, but just need to be united to form a strong coalition against it. How could you go about it?

You can show them that there are other people that feel the same way and give them ways to meet up. You can start leading and organising, even at a fairly small and local level, because this may grow into a greater movement. You can make sure to visibly support people who have been publically injured by the tyrants to encourage others to resist. You can make public the damage that the tyrants are doing to individuals, to communities, to everyone within their reach.

Hell, you can start a militia to enact violent resistance and assassinations if you really want. Or just get a weapon and go full Saint Luigi hoping that other people will follow your example.

There's lots of ways that you can unite, basically anything that makes resistance to tyranny visible and encourages others to join in. None of this requires reference to any nation at all. You are simply a group of people who are against the behaviour of the tyrants and are willing to act in resistance in whatever form that takes. That is the bond that links you, and that is enough. For the people where that isn't enough to draw them into the group, they shouldn't be there anyway because they're not actually against tyranny.

Throwing in nationalism doesn't help this, it just gives ways for the movement to mistakenly target individuals or groups that the national identity labels as "other" and avoid targeting those labelled as "citizens". Those are not the groups that are the problem if your purpose is to fight tyranny. You want to target "tyrants" and avoid targeting "non-tyrants", and those groups can be external or internal.

Know your enemy, because I don't think you do. You're just parroting more stuff that you've been fed on the internet without really thinking about what it means. Maybe this time sit down and have a think about what you actually believe before you go off half-cocked.
 
In an interview with Fox News host, Sean Hannity, Trump said:
This guy went around giving everybody pardons. And you know, the funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon. And if you look at it, it all had to do with him.”

Why would the previous Potus need to pardin himself when a very recent ruling made clear that a president is above the law.
 
Because Trump thinks that only applies when he's POTUS.
Incoming executive order:
presidential protection against criminal charges only applies to fat, white, succesful businessmen wearing a blue suit with a red tie who were voted into office as candidate representing the GOP.

In the next line:
Gulf of Mexico is now to be named Gulf of America.
 
In the next line:
Gulf of Mexico is now to be named Gulf of America.
Maybe he can get Americans to refer to it as such, but internationally it will still be known as The Gulf of Mexico. He doesn't hold the power to change it worldwide.
 
Maybe he can get Americans to refer to it as such, but internationally it will still be known as The Gulf of Mexico. He doesn't hold the power to change it worldwide.

...just like the folks who call the Persian Gulf the "Arabian Gulf" due to nationalistic tendencies, despite a half-millennium of prior naming.

Not that I'm drawing any comparisons but maybe they need to be reminded to color within the lines on dry land.
 
Back